©Aggelina Grafakou

Biography

Yannis Kolesidis

Yannis Kolesidis was born in Athens in 1973 and has been working as a photojournalist since 1994.

From 2004 to 2013 he worked for the international news agency Reuters and since 2014 he has been working for the Athenian Macedonian News Agency (APE-MPE) and the European Press Agency (EPA).

His photographs have been published in major newspapers and magazines abroad, such as the New York Times, Guardian, Time, Stern, Paris Match, etc. as well as the entire Greek press.

His work has won a number of awards, most notably second prize in the World Press Photo 2009, in the category “People in the News”.

Other awards include:

  • 2017:
    Overall winner and first prize in the Photojournalism category of the competition “Canon Editor’s choice contest
  • 2014:
    Third prize in the Picture of the Year International (POYi) competition in the category “Natural Disasters”
  • 2012:
    First prize in the Picture of the Year International (POYi) competition in the category “General News”
  • 2004:
    Award of Excellence in the Pictures of the Year International (POYi) competition in the category ‘’Portrait’’
  • 1999:
    First prize in the category ”Free reportage” at the FUJI Film Euro Press Awards.

His images have been shown in a series of group exhibitions and in 2009 he presented his work from his collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) with photographs from his travels to Niger, Zambia and India.